Baby boy born after double shooting is not doing well, family member says

Thirteen bullet holes mark the townhouse door where a 22-year-old pregnant woman and a 26-year-old man were shot early Tuesday, January 23, 2018. Virginia Bridgesvbridges@heraldsun.com

Thirteen bullet holes mark the townhouse door where a 22-year-old pregnant woman and a 26-year-old man were shot early Tuesday, January 23, 2018. Virginia Bridgesvbridges@heraldsun.com

Durham

The 22-year-old woman who was shot multiple times this week and forced to deliver her baby early is improving, but a family member said they are worried about the newborn.

“He is not doing well,” Marva Norwood, the woman’s aunt, said Thursday. “I don't know how much they would want me to say about it. He had a lack of oxygen to his brain,” after the mother lost a lot of blood after being shot.

The woman was due at the end of February, Norwood said. Doctors are still working to stabilize her niece, a mother of three including the baby boy who was delivered by C-section after the Tuesday shooting, Norwood said.

The baby is in the neonatal intensive care unit at a local hospital. He was so small he could fit in the palm of a hand, she said.

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Norwood has started a crowdfunding campaign to help her niece and family move to a safe place outside of Durham after she gets out of the hospital.

“I am asking the public for some kind of relief. She is progressing, thank God,” said Norwood, 28, of Chapel Hill. “We ask for everybody to keep praying. Keep doing what they are doing. Even if they are only able to do a penny, give a penny. We ask for their help because we are going to need it.”

Police got a call around 12:20 a.m. Tuesday and found the woman and a 26-year-old man shot multiple times in a townhouse at Hoover Road Apartments, a public housing community at 1126 Hoover Road.

The man and women were taken to the hospital with serious injuries, police said. They did not offer a motive for the shooting or say how many time they were shot.

Norwood said she doesn’t believe her niece and her boyfriend were the targets.

Bahshira Magwood woke up around midnight to gunshots popping, she said.

“It scared me,” said Magwood, 16, who was staying in an apartment next door. “And I started crying.”

“I went over there, and I saw her and her baby father lying on the floor,” she continued.

The woman appeared to be shot in her temple and on the side of her chest, Magwood said.

Magwood was told that someone banged on the door and didn’t respond when the pregnant woman asked who it was.

“Nobody said nothing,” Magwood said. “And then gunshots.”

On Tuesday afternoon, the door to the apartment had at least 13 gunshot holes.

The woman and man were one of about five children and five adults in the home, Magwood said, but others weren’t hurt.

Magwood got a cold towel, she said, and put it on the pregnant woman’s neck while they waited for the ambulance.

“I kind of feel it really helped her because she didn’t start passing out,” Magwood said.

Anyone with information is asked to call Investigator G.T. Novotny at 919- 560-4281, ext. 29121 or CrimeStoppers at 919- 683-1200. CrimeStoppers pays cash rewards for information leading to arrests in felony cases and callers never have to identify themselves.